Inability of Petite Mutants of Industrial Yeasts to Utilize Various Sugars, and a Comparison with the Ability of the Parent Strains to Ferment the Same Sugars Microaerophilically

Abstract

A number of industrial strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae were converted to the petite form and tested for the ability to utilize galactose, maltose, sucrose, α-methyl glucoside and raffinose. The parent strains all metabolized these sugars aerobically. Twelve of the petite forms did not utilize galactose, six failed to utilize maltose, 17 did not utilize x-methyl glucoside, and 18 did not utilize raffinose. The petites of two distiller’s yeast strains did not utilize sucrose. The respiratory-competent parent strains nearly all fermented galactose, maltose, sucrose and raffinose, though 19 strains did not ferment α-methyl glucoside microaerophilically. Three strains did not ferment galactose, two fermented it only after several days adaptation, one did not ferment raffinose, and two did not ferment sucrose under microaerophilic conditions. Six respiratory-competent strains which did not utilize galactose when in the petite form fermented higher (10%) concentrations of glucose and maltose under microaerophilic conditions, but only three of these fermented galactose. The implications of these findings for the use of such strains in industry are discussed briefly.